Bankers are committed to helping small business partners as the payment industry leads the ongoing transition to chip-based EMV card technology, ABA said in a statement for the record for a House Small Business Committee hearing. Successful implementation of EMV will protect consumers and brick-and-mortar merchants from scammers who use counterfeit cards, ABA said.
“Banks have worked closely with small businesses throughout the upgrade process to ensure that they are prepared,” ABA said. “Several banks and merchant services companies have offered incentives to offset costs involved in upgrading terminals, making them free in some cases. It is also important to emphasize that consumers will continue to enjoy the same protections for fraud — zero liability in most cases.”
ABA emphasized that while EMV chips are an important innovation to better protect consumers’ financial data, they are just one part of the broader effort being made by banks and networks to combat hackers and other criminals — an effort that includes new approaches like tokenization, multi-factor authentication and biometric authentication.